The article presents the results of an interdisciplinary study examining the explicit and implicit attitudes of proactivity and proactive behavior of low-income students. The authors highlight the main approaches to the analysis of proactivity and proactive behavior, and substantiate the connection between proactivity and the possibility of forming individual trajectories of action to escape poverty. To study implicit attitudes, a brief implicit association test was used, which is a computer task of classifying stimuli belonging to two categories of proactivity and passivity and two attributes of positive and negative valence. The test used in sociological and psychological research is aimed at measuring the latency of an individual’s reaction, reflects the strength of associations between presented words and indicates the presence of implicit attitudes. The test results confirmed the same level of expression of implicit attitudes among low-income and non-poor students. To study explicit attitudes, an in-depth interview method was used with low-income students. The study showed the formation of positive explicit and implicit attitudes of proactive behavior among Samara University students. In conclusion, it is concluded that low-income students have formed explicit and implicit attitudes of proactive behavior, which can be prerequisites for overcoming poverty and their successful social adaptation.